A Quest for Crutches (and why can't you take a direct flight to Taipei from Beijing?)

The entire time I've been in China I've carried around a small red memo notebook for jotting down various thoughts, observations, or funny/interesting T.I.C. stories, most of which I intend to write about here at some point. Well, considering the fact that I only have about a month before I return stateside, I figured now would be a good time to expound upon what I have jotted down thus far.

There is one story in particular that I starred as something that must appear in my blog. It involves one of my roommates, Katie, and her quest to find crutches in China. Many of you probably think of getting crutches as a somewhat non-chalant kind of task - you go to the doctor, explain the problem with your foot/leg/whatever other part of the body that, if hurt, would require you to use crutches, and they give you crutches. Well, here is the story of how a normally simple undertaking quickly became a challenging endeavor spanning several days.

Katie injured her foot during a trip to the Great Wall (the general consensus is that it's a stress fracture). She went to the clinic at PKU, where she paid 4 kuai (a little over 50 cents) to visit the doctor. In recounting her story to me later in the day, Katie mentioned that while her bank account appreciated this extremely low fee, the lack of privacy and intellectual property rights was blatant. She told me that after waiting in line, she was ushered into a room to see the doctor. The door was left wide open (in fact, there might not have been a door at all - I'll have to double-check on this one), and she sat down to have the doctor check her foot in clear view of the gawking Chinese people in line behind her. In addition to those immediately behind her, other people decided to crane their necks to see the waiguoren (foreigner) visiting the Chinese doctor! After some poking and prodding, the doctor gave Katie some Chinese medicine and told her to keep her foot off the ground. Then Katie asked for crutches, and the quest for crutches commenced. Katie tells me that when she asked for crutches, the doctor said (in Chinese), "Crutches? We don't have any crutches here. Ask the people at Wu Mei (the mini mart on campus, which has a pharmacy). They'll probably have some." So poor Katie had to hobble across the street and down the rather long flight of stairs to get to the basement-level store, where the person at the pharmacy said to come back the next morning, as they did not have any crutches at that time.

Bright and early the next morning, Katie again trekked to Wu Mei, where she was told to return at noon, as they still did not have the crutches. When she came back at noon, they brought out some crutches that ended up being too tall. The funny thing is, at their absolute shortest, these crutches would still have only been suitable for someone approximately 5'10"! One thing's certain - I rarely see Chinese people, male or female, who are 5'10" or taller! Yeah, we got a kick out of that one, that's for sure.

Thus, with her hopes of finding crutches at Wu Mei dashed against the rocks, Katie decided to take matters into her own hands. As she defiantly limped back to our dorm, she crossed paths (or roads?) with the guy who has essentially become the favorite cab driver/chauffeur of our program, Duan Xiansheng. He appeared earlier in my blog as the driver who picked me up at the airport upon my arrival in Beijing. Well, Duan Xiansheng took Katie further downtown to get crutches - and they were met with success! Katie is now the proud owner of a sleek pair of metal crutches, and is now even more of an attention-getter when walking (sort of) around campus - as if her blond hair and blue eyes weren't enough already! What an ordeal. But remember - T.I.C.!

So that's the story of Katie's quest to find crutches. In fact, I never realized how few people I see with crutches or in wheelchairs here. I think Katie is the first person I've seen yet with more than just an old wooden side-crutch. China really isn't the best place to be disabled. In fact, we were discussing this in my Chinese political reforms class yesterday. Deng Xiaoping (if you don't know who he is, look him up, because as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, he was probably China's most influential political and economic reformer) has a son, Deng Pufang who was crippled after apparently being pushed out of a fourth-story window by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution because he was the son of a "capitalist roader". He is now the chairman of China's Disabled Persons Federation. Despite having such a high-profile leader and advocate, the cause has not garnered nearly as much support as it could from the government, which is very unfortunate. China's continued snubbing of the disabled repeatedly makes its way into various human rights reports, including the most recent one released by the US State Department.

Speaking of my Chinese political reforms class: I could tell we made our professor, a card-carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party, (albeit one who is mainly a member of the CCP for the benefits associated with membership, rather than for his political views), slightly uncomfortable yesterday when the Taiwan issue was brought up. One of my friends studied abroad in Taipei, Taiwan a few years ago, and is returning after our program ends to visit her host family. However, she soon found out that there are no direct flights from Beijing to Taipei, despite the fact that, under the One-China Policy, which is supported vehemently by the CCP, Taiwan is still considered part of China. She asked our professor why this was so - why she has to book a flight or take the train down to Hong Kong in order to get a flight to Taipei. He kind of danced around the question, obviously caught off-guard, provided a very ambiguous answer, and ended class a little early. It was kind of awkward, to say the least.